Interview of 3,538 people in the U.S. shows 22% of very liberal respondents own bitcoin.
It’s time to adjust your Bitcoin hodler stereotype.
A new study by academics Troy Cross and Andrew Perkins of Reed College and Washington State University respectively has overturned the prevailing idea that Bitcoiners are all libertarian and right-wing conservatives.
In what Cross called their most shocking result, bitcoiners populate the entire political spectrum, and while they are slightly more prone to the extremes, the community is mostly moderate.
According to the study, which interviewed 3,538 people in the U.S., the largest cohort of bitcoiners belongs to the very liberal category, with 21%. The exact other side of the spectrum, very conservative Americans, come in second with 17%.
“Since its inception, Bitcoin has faced criticism from across the political spectrum, but in recent years most of the attacks have come from the political left,” read the study. “What we found, however, is that Bitcoin ownership is not linked to political identity,” even though Bitcoin owners were slightly “more extreme” in their politics.
Mostly Moderate
It’s no surprise that most people correlate Bitcoin with libertarians.
However, the results of the research offer a very different conclusion: most Bitcoin owners aren’t rooting for the demise of the state. A meager 3% of bitcoiners call themselves libertarian, and while the largest cohorts land on each extreme, the majority of U.S.-based Bitcoin owners are similar to the broader population when it comes to politics: moderate.
“Bitcoin owners are politically just like the rest of America: mostly moderate, with smaller conservative and liberal contingents,” Cross wrote on X on July 22.
Cypherpunks and Vocal Minority
So why the overarching sentiment that Bitcoiners are libertarian? It’s likely two things: the cypherpunks, and a boisterous minority.
The cypherpunks were a group of activists, and mathematicians who believed in the power of cryptography as a tool for enacting social change, offering freedom, and granting societal impact. Many cypherpunks include Julian Assange, Hal Finney (the person to receive the first bitcoin transaction from Satoshi himself), and Adam Back–one of the few cryptographers named in Bitcoin’s whitepaper) among others.
Bitcoin is the work of decades-long research and development by cypherpunks who viewed non-state digital money as the holy grail.
Non-state digital money had been the holy grail for cypherpunks for years. Until Bitcoin, a number of failed attempts adorned their walls, such as David Chaum’s Digicash, Nick Szabo’s Bitgold, Adam Back’s Hashcash, and the Liberty Dollar among others.
When Satoshi wrote the whitepaper, in 2008, in fact, he published it in the cypherpunk mailing list, a forum for like-minded computer activists to discuss advancements in computer science, and general social and economic theory.
Meanwhile, a vocal minority could also be attributed to the thought that Bitcoiners are libertarian. Several of the most active bitcoin members on X–anonymous or public figures–publicly proclaim that Bitcoin is here to destroy the state.
However, Cross and Perkins’s study is upending that idea, showcasing that most bitcoiners continue to believe in the existence of some sort of traditional institution to remain in place and help steer society.
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